Traditional Medieval stories

[whatswrongwithme22]

So, I watched the movie, The King and ever since then I've been binge watching medieval movies like Kingdom of heaven, outlaw king, hollow crown, iron clad and the like.
But its getting harder to find a good movie about it so, Anyone can recommend a book in medieval settings? Prefereble no magic, and if they are, so long as it isn't high fantasy.
I'm looking for:
War
Unique characters
Minimized politics, I don't mind politics, so long as its not too much.
Maybe kingdom building where mc starts small, a peasant or a small lord and grows his power.
And most importantly: MC is not a dick!
I know its in medieval settings but its kinda hard to root for a scum protagonist right? At least let the mc be a decent man.

Anyways for those give their recommendations, thank you~~

 

[ZukoMee]

Stephen R. Lawhead's King Raven Trilogy.

Bernard Cornwell's The Warlord Chronicles

Bernard Cornwell's The Saxon Stories Series

Bernard Cornwell's The Grail Quest Series

 

[whatswrongwithme22]

Stephen R. Lawhead's King Raven Trilogy.

Bernard Cornwell's The Warlord Chronicles

Bernard Cornwell's The Saxon Stories Series

Bernard Cornwell's The Grail Quest Series

Thanks for this, Starting Grail quest soon~

 

[Representing_Tromba]

Stephen R. Lawhead's King Raven Trilogy.

Bernard Cornwell's The Warlord Chronicles

Bernard Cornwell's The Saxon Stories Series

Bernard Cornwell's The Grail Quest Series

Bernard Cornwell anything is good. I personally recommend The Winter King by him.

 

[xuduxixi]

The first thing I thought to recommend was Dungeon Defense (Web novel) but saw no scum protagonist, so don't mind that.

The Girl Who Ate a Death God — It's short, but have a good war fights and strategies, and you can guess it from the title that the mc is unique.

 

[Bartun]

It seems you already watched the cool stuff. Maybe 'Flesh and Blood' from the director of Robocop and 'The Last Duel'. For books, I would love to recommend my novel but it is not yet finished.

 

[Kenjona]

So funny side note. Many Modern medieval films get one thing wrong that earlier medieval films got right. It might be for reasons other then period accuracy, but it makes them period inaccurate.

If they are going to a feast or faire they are not going to be wearing drab clothing, they are going in their best and brightest. Which means as richly colored clothing as they can afford. Not drab greys, brown and dirty whites. Only some of the workers might wear drab clothing WHILE working, so they would not ruin their better clothing, even then it generally would be their "best" work clothes.

 

[Representing_Tromba]

Mists of Avalon is also great.

 

[ZukoMee]

Bernard Cornwell anything is good. I personally recommend The Winter King by him.

That's part of The Warlord's Chronicles. First in the trilogy. My favorite series by him, by FAR!!

Bernard Cornwell anything is good. I personally recommend The Winter King by him.

Learned they were making a show of The Warlord Chronicles....and then as usual, Modern UK decided Late 5th, Early 6th century Britain was multicultural. They made Merlin black, several of the cast are Gay.....which I'm not even sure how anyone came to these conclusions since the only character that was gay is Bishop Sansum. I'm not sure who they inevitably chose, but at one point they had Nimue being cast as Hispanic....which is just as insulting as Merlin being black. The only non-white in the entire series should have ONLY been Sagramor. He's described as Numidian and even Numidians weren't black. North Africans were never black. I'm not sure why Bernard Cornwell made Sagramor a Numidian in the first place since I've read all of the old medieval text on King Arthur and Sagramor was never Numidian in any of them, but I'll forgive Mr. Cornwell that one.

I'm always amused at this multicultural nonsense they shoehorn into works that aren't multicultural and were never intended to be. But the moment non-white/European-esque works that have no white cast are mentioned, and someone wants to add a white character to it, (one that isn't automatically the villain or an incompetent moron played for laughs), suddenly it's racism/bigotry.